MFSA Annual Banquet 2004

"America as a Land of Rights: Immigrants, the Church, and the Struggle for Justice"
by Edward W. Leahy

I am very grateful for the opportunity to address your assembly tonight. While not a member of the Methodist Church, I am a great supporter of your ministry and message in the world today. From the fantastic television commercials that promote your communion as one of "open heart, open minds, and open doors" to the vibrant congregations that populate the Heartland to the important projects to help newcomers integrate into our society such as Justice for Our Neighbors. I work in close collaboration with that project in particular and applaud the vision, support, and dedication of your Church to this vital ministry. Our region is sorely under-represented with respect to quality legal advice available to immigrants, with JFON being the only program in the region to provide pro-bono legal representation on a consistent basis to help people navigate our broken, antiquated, and overburdened system of immigration laws. You can each be proud to be part of building the Reign of God through this project that promotes understanding, justice, and inclusion in this time of division, suspicion, and hostility toward those who are different. Which brings us to the theme of my words to you tonight, America as a Land of Rights: Immigrants, the Church and the Struggle for Justice.

In my opinion, one of the principal barriers to social justice today is political correctness, closely followed by its ancillary: apathy. Too often, we are afraid to take action out of a fear of offending another or of a greater fear of becoming involved, distracted from our own self-centered pursuits. Confronted with injustices, we think, "Surely the law will protect us."

In the legalistic ambiance pervasive in our country, we hide behind the law, assuming it has our collective best interests at the center. Frequently, the law protects the self-interest of certain groups in opposition to others. I am not speaking about the majority of criminal law which protects us all and governs order in society, but rather other civil laws which govern certain behaviors of individuals, corporations, and groups. Because a law is passed, does not necessarily mean it is a good law or a just law. We need only consider the debate surrounding the Patriot Act as an example. Is the sacrifice of civil liberties, privacy, and limits on police powers called for in that law really necessary in the struggle against terrorism? Does this law value America's most precious gift of freedom to the world?

Most of the world operates on a few basic principles or strategies, sometimes alone, most often in concert with one another:

1). Might Makes Right: We see this principle at work in the totalitarian states that have dominated their people with military strength, oppressing the poor, powerless, different and free-thinking in their societies. Wars, conflicts, imprisonments, and crimes against humanity have peppered the headlines throughout the world in every age.

2). Money Talks: The rich and powerful have always maintained their stranglehold over politics, social life, courts, and religion in many countries throughout the ages. One's class determined who can marry who, who has access to what, when and how. If you don't have the green, gold, rocks, oil, or gas, you survive at the will of those who do.

3). Gender matters: Sometimes we forget, or never stop to think, that most of the women in the world still live in socially acceptable slavery. To be seen (sometimes!), but not heard. To be blamed for who they are from the moment of birth. To be "respected and honored" with lip service once a year or in a certain festival or ceremony, but otherwise ignored as lower form of life.

4). White is pure, and pure white is even better: Despite the fact that the origins of human life are rooted in Africa and Asia, that many modern nations had aboriginal people living and civilizing the land long before the arrival of Europeans and their new diseases, and that firm beliefs in the community of peoples and harmony with the earth held in check the excesses of greed, lust for power, and territorial expansionism, we somehow got and gave the message that the white man is always right. No, white people are not all that bad. Yes, abuses happened in African, Native American, Mayan, Incan, Japanese, Chinese and other cultures too. So that brings us to an important related principle: Race (tribe, culture, family, hair style or color, breast size, butt shape, circumcision, hue, tint, slant, height, earlobe length, piercing, tattoos, lip stretch, neck extension or other parts mutilation) is Ace: How easily we forget that there is only one race---the human race. That what most distinguishes us from the animals, rocks, plants and water that also populate our planet (if not the universe entirely) is the possibility of being able to think of another's needs before our own, to love, to image the Divine, and to really think and act in ways that demonstrate an understanding of basic physics: one action causes an equal, if not greater, reaction.

5). Breeder's Preference: Any extended visit to the zoo, hours watching the Discovery Channel or Animal Planet will raise enough questions about the exclusivity of sexual expression to challenge the most ardent defenders of ancient texts. Yes, the propagation of future generations is important, must be protected, cherished and valued, but there is room at the inn for those not in the mainstream.

6). My god is better than your god: Whether you prefer blue hair, beads, head to toe coverings, beards, fat bellies, tree sitting, fragrant incenses, chimes, bells, hallucinogenic fungi, herbs or drinks, fetishes, wafer thin bread or nothing at all, thank you, humanity has always tried to impose on another part of humanity the power of beliefs and the true truth as they see it.

Let me clear at this point, I do not subscribe to these principles. I am merely reflecting on the presence of them in the ways of the world and being direct with you to get your blood going. The complexity of these strategies finds their place in most debates in our diverse society.

Of course, we like to think that here in America, things are different. That this is the land of freedom. That all are equal. That there is a balance of powers and a separation of Church and State to protect us from abuses and injustices. And there is. But we certainly are not free from the influence of these principles in our public policies. Note that in our history the African was considered 3/5 human, the American Indian not recognized as human until April 1878, and that women still struggle for equality in our own lifetimes. But the best points in our history as a nation have been when we rose above the fray to not only found our Constitution on the rights of human beings, but to base our laws on them.

That how the slaves became free and people of color began to count as fully human. That's why women can vote and work outside the home, that's why the poor can sometimes get justice, that's why we have the peaceful transfer of power, even in the midst of controversy, that's why anything that truly good ever got discussed, promoted, passed, signed into law, and became a promise of better times, a possibility, if not a sincere reality. And these changes, these new rights, were not developed in isolation, but in a collaboration of peoples, churches, agencies, and elected officials to help those affected populations name, claim, define, and defend their rights.

America is a nation of immigrants. America is a nation of laws. But more than anything, I believe, America is a land where rights are named, claimed, defined, and defended. We are at a watershed moment in history where old rights are being defended, and where the discussion of new rights is starting to rise above the level of "Oh, shut up you bleeding heart liberal and destroyer of time-tested values." And, immigrants are finding a place in the discussion!

The census of 2000 was an instructive instrument for this discussion. It has helped advance the discussion of immigrant rights and to debunk the notion that we can continue to ignore the "elephant in the room" when it comes to the sweeping demographic changes in our country and especially, our region. Nebraska witnessed a population growth of 168% in the 10 year period from 1990-2000, attributed principally to immigrants. That propelled the State to 7th in the nation in terms of new immigrants. Iowa came in at 12th in the nation. Moreover, the figures showed that, despite this growth, our region still lost adult population because these new communities are predominately young. This helps to explain the revitalization of many small towns with filled schools, new businesses on Main Street, and a solid hope to survive the economic and social downturn of the late 90's. These facts also propelled new challenges and enhanced old fears and prejudices that have resulted in immigrant communities being surrounded by a myriad of issues that threaten their progress and integration into the fabric of America as that land of rights and freedom.

Most egregious of these issues are the violations of civil rights in the past few years. In December 2002, the FBI reported a 1600% increase in reported hate crimes in our nation. A hate crime is a violation of one's humanity, so personal and so foul, that often people have difficulty admitting they have been victimized, hated, beaten, and discriminated against simply because of who they are. When students in Dubuque, IA want to relax on a Friday night, they go to the Carousel Lounge in East Dubuque, IL. One night, a Hispanic man out with his buddies, went to use the men's room at the bar. He was followed in by several white men and beaten up and warned that his "kind" had better go back where they came from. Now that's bad, but that's only the beginning. It happened again to another young man, same scenario. The bar owner denied any knowledge of the event. The police routinely took the information. The college refused to post any warning to other students about a developing pattern. Still, it happened again to another young man. By the time it happened to Steve Martin, he was beaten to within an inch of his life and he was born and raised in the United States. His only fault was being brown and being bilingual. Only with intense pressure from our local chapter did the authorities finally investigate, but it was too late for Steven.

A few other examples at a more rapid pace: the reactions of the community to the Norfolk, NE bank robberies two years ago saw many incidents of recriminations against the large Hispanic community in that town. Because the criminals were Hispanic, the town extended their disgust over the heinous murders to anyone of that same descent. Not everyone, but enough. Apparently, it didn't matter that the criminals were born and raised U.S. citizens. We witnessed similar fears in Muslim communities just after the terrorist attacks.

In our region, 400 Muslim men between 16 and 60 years old were called into the Department of Homeland Security during the Special Registrations last year. Only one person was discovered to be out of status, but the message to the whole community from our government was anything but welcoming. Police departments frequently overstep their authority with respect to newcomers. It seems that the mere mention of the CLEAR Act, a proposal to actually deputize local police to be de facto immigration agents, is enough of a nod to continue a campaign of fear against the foreign-born. The CLEAR Act is not the law and no such authority exists.

Flyers spewing hate have routinely been dropped in Nebraska communities by a white supremacist group, the National Alliance. This isn't just "back road Billy" defending his race from the onslaught of dark skinned hordes seeking to rape his mother and sister but "mainstream Mike" who is most often professional, organized and educated. Yes, brothers and sisters, years of institutionalized racism rarely challenged from our pulpits anymore have come home to roost. It is nearly "acceptable" because some of us see some truth in it. I remember my sainted mother telling me that "if it looks like it and smells like it, it probably is."

On the conservative talk show, "The Steve Brown Show" on FM radio in Omaha, Mr. Brown harangued Senator Hagel for introducing a comprehensive immigration reform bill, The Immigration Reform Act of 2004, by beginning his show as follows: "What's he (Hagel) trying to do? Getting us to want more baked Mexican?" (referring to the tragedy in Dennison, IA when 14 undocumented migrants were discovered suffocated and decomposed inside a rail car).

There are many more such examples of the challenges facing immigrant communities and these examples do not even highlight the difficulties with the system as it is and for those with a legal status who still must navigate a complex series of contradictions, often waiting decades for paperwork to be processed and paying ever higher rates in fees. And yet, there is progress, especially in two areas.

The FBI in our region has added new staff to investigate hate crimes. One agent, in particular, has been very effective at outreach and appears at many community meetings. Diversity committees and hate crime coalitions are finding a voice in our communities. Many State agencies, among them equal opportunity commissions and civil rights commissions have been embracing new services to immigrant communities. Labor unions are continuing to educate their members and to include newcomers at every level, as witnessed by renewed vigor in organizing campaigns in the packing industry and the recent Immigrant Worker Freedom Rides which had four stops in our region.

We have seen advancement of legislative proposals at the State and Federal levels, such as the DREAM Act which would allow undocumented students who grew up in our communities and graduate high school to attain a legal status, and the Gobs Bill, which would afford migrant agricultural workers an opportunity to adjust their status after years of back-breaking work for low pay in the fields and nurseries of our country. While not law yet, these two bills in particular have been the vanguard of change and a wake-up call to communities that progress in human rights will not destroy the American Dream that many of us already enjoy.

More recently, we have seen the introduction of two comprehensive immigration reform bills: the aforementioned Immigration Reform Act of 2004 and the Safe, Orderly, Legal Visa Enforcement (SOLVE) Act in response to the President's admission that the "system is broken." While these comprehensive bills are not expected to pass into law this year, they do demonstrate the serious public debate on policies long overdue for attention.

Legislative solutions alone will not cure the ills of a system that regulates the movement of human beings across the world and the individual dreams of progress and peace that give them hope. We must also change the culture of suspicion within the new Department of Homeland Security and the simplistic views of communities that previous generations learned English overnight, walked to and from school in blinding snowstorms both ways, and were only too quick to embrace baseball, hot dogs and apple pie. No, we must also mobilize immigrant and citizen communities to value the new opportunities presented by the demographic changes and to seek to control those future changes to the benefit of all into a fair, generous, orderly and enforceable system of immigration laws.

If you will indulge me at this point to reflect on some the Catholic theology that most influenced my life and past ministry, I believe I can make the case that the journey of immigrants intimately mirrors the journey of the Christian through this world to new life in Christ. I am speaking of the six principles of Catholic social doctrine.

First, the dignity of the human person. Each person is created according to the image of God; therefore, all of human life, in every stage from conception to natural death, is sacred. The basic dignity of each person comes from God; therefore, any type of discrimination is sinful. The human person has priority over structures and things. All political, economic, and social systems are at the service of the human person, not the contrary.

Second, the preferential option for the poor. The Gospel calls all Christians to give priority to the needs of the poor. A good moral test of a society is how it treats its most needy members. Wherever there exists unjust structures, Christians are called to oppose them.

Third, the dignity of work. Our work is an expression of our individual dignity as well as a sign of our participation in the creation of God. All human beings have a right to a decent job, just wages, and private property. The economy, again, exists to serve us, not the other way around.

Those of us desire to live in peace and self-determination must remember that that cannot come at the expense of the other. Too often today, our world is gripped by individualism, another enemy of social justice. We suffer at the hands of all kinds of oppressors precisely because we live in pseudo-community, near each other, but in fact isolated from each other.

Isolation, the worst disease of the troubled, is the curse of the poor. Isolation is a tragic disease because it keeps a person from fulfillment, from happiness.

Long before the time of Christ, the Greeks and the Romans referred to human beings as "social animals" who are made for friendship, for community, and for public life. They knew that people achieve self-actualization not in isolation, but in interaction with others. But trouble often isolates a person from society's mainstream.

We have throw-away kids and throw-away old people. We have refugees who feel unwanted, and poor who are scrutinized and criticized at every turn. We see the mentally ill who wander downtown and are considered a nuisance, the teenagers who become pregnant, the chemically dependent, married couples in crisis, the gays and lesbians. All of them too often feel that no one really cares.

This is a human tragedy, but more than that, it is a religious disaster. Those of us with faith in God cannot tolerate such separation in our society.

Both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Scriptures tell us we must not only love God, but also our neighbor, and love demands communion. Yet, we continue to isolate. Woven throughout the Bible is the concept of community. Some of the most consoling words in the Bible are "I shall be your God and you shall be my people." It does not say, "You will be my person." God seldom addresses the individual's needs. God's revelations are for the community because it is only in community --in union with others-- that we can grow.

One time in 1994 in Chicago, I served in a parish in a poor Hispanic neighborhood. We had a number of comunidades de base (Christian base communities) throughout the neighborhood. Each week, neighbors would meet to study the Scriptures and analyze their daily lives. One particular block, west 17th Street, was troubled by gangs, graffiti, and garbage. The neighbors felt threatened and hostage in their dilapidated apartments. In their weekly meeting, they decided to host a block clean-up on a Saturday morning, to paint over the graffiti, and to hold a religious service for all the residents of the block as well as a cook-out. They applied for the permit to close down the street, solicited paint donations from local businesses and planned the party and service.

Some 40 people swept the street that day and engaged in friendly conversations with the people along side of whom they had been living. The street sparkled and the walls were white-washed. I celebrated the Mass in the open air, blessing all the homes and the street corners, and calling attention to the obvious miracle that had happened. Gang bangers watched in awe, and I imagine, some trepidation at how a community was formed.

At the end of the Mass and before the party, I invited Juana Torres, the coordinator of the base community to say a few words of invitation. With great fear and nervousness in her voice, she approached the microphone and spoke very softly words of thanks and politely invited the people to partake of the food. Then, she wanted to introduce her base community to the block. One by one, the six or seven men and women of her community gathered around her, then with great determination, Juana found her voice and began to speak with passion, calling the gathered crowd to live each day what they experienced that day. To this day, you can drive down that block and see clean gutters, flowers and no graffiti and children safely playing in front of their homes.

Alone, Juana could do nothing. With a few, it was possible to effect a change. With all working in concert, true peace and an elevation in living conditions occurred.

The fourth principle of Catholic social doctrine is community and the common good. The mystery of the Trinity includes the complete relation of love among three divine Persons--Father, Son and Holy Spirit-- in one God. As persons made according to the image of God, we have the obligation to be a model of God's love and total abandonment in service. As a consequence, the human person is as fundamentally holy as social. In community, we achieve the realization of our dignity and our rights in relation to the other and with the other. The concept of the common good demands that we consider what is best, not for the majority of the members of a community, but for each and every member of the community.

The fifth principle that comes into play in this part of our story is solidarity. Throughout the world, there is only one race-- the human race. We are all members of one great and diverse family. When we recognize our own dignity, rights, and responsibilities, we acknowledge the dignity, rights and responsibilities of the other and we have the obligation to continue building a community which permits that all the rest of humanity achieves the fullness of human potential. When we work for social justice, we fulfill the commandment to build the Body of Christ. When we move from being active individuals to being activists, we actualize the depth of our humanity.

Action, positive action, rooted in one's religious convictions is the key to being a successful activist. Violence, which cripples our society and is a perennial political issue, is not an acceptable means to achieve a just end. Dr. James Garbarino, professor of human development and family studies at Cornell University, identifies in his book Raising Children in a Socially Toxic Environment (Jossey-Bass, Inc., 1995), the roots of violence. He relates the experiment of a psychologist named Milgrim who conducted a study to see if average human beings would torture with electric shock another human being. The subjects were placed in front of a panel of switches ranging from mild to extreme high voltage and given criteria to "shock" another person (the learner) when he gave a wrong answer to a question. The question was, would normal people do this? The answer was, yes, they will, if the situation is right. Of course, the switches did not actually deliver a shock; the learner was an actor.

Garbarino asks why is anything possible with respect to violence. He further identifies two processes. One is desensitization, the fact that it is possible to move people from virtually any point A to any point Z as long as you do it in small steps. The difference between A and B is so slight that you might not even notice that you've moved. And B and C is so small, you don't even notice that you've moved from A to C. Before long, you're at Z. Some fascinating work done on American soldiers going to Vietnam illustrates this. New recruits would hear veterans talking about "gooks" to refer to the Vietnamese, and they might be a little uncomfortable with that. A couple of months later, the recruits would say things like, "You know, I hear these guys coming back from Nam saying they knocked around a few gooks. I wouldn't knock any gooks around," not realizing they've already moved down the path; now they're using the word "gooks." A few months later, they're over in Vietnam and they're saying, "I hear about these weirdoes who waste gooks. I might knock a few around, you know, but I wouldn't waste them." They've moved further down the path, the path that ends up in My Lai, the most heavily documented massacre of Vietnamese civilians by American soldiers--not by maniacs, but by regular guys who had walked down the path.

Part of walking down that path is the other process which is depersonalization. The minute one begins to depersonalize the other, the door is open to violence and aggression. Empathy, the feeling of oneness with the other, is the enemy of violence. Depersonalization is the friend of violence, while socialization is its antonym. That, of course, has many implications for how we define people. The moment someone becomes a category, a group name, a gook, or an illegal alien, the door is open to aggression against them. Once a person has walked through that door, it's very hard to turn back. This locates racism and sexism and most other "isms" at the core of the violence in our society.

Garbarino also notes that most violent people had experienced a significant trauma in their lives; in other words, violence had been done to them. He calls this a "crisis of meaning" which leads to terminal thinking, or the impression that nothing can change the sad facts of a situation. Trauma sets in motion a philosophical and spiritual crisis which creates all kinds of political and religious problems for a society. Without some kind of transforming experience, the violent trauma sets in motion a process of revenge.

The implications for change are various. One is that we need to recognize that the spiritual crisis, the spiritual wound, is the more important wound. There are people all over the world who have experienced trauma and suffer from its symptoms, but who also have a sense of meaning in their lives that allows them to go forward. It's the difference between being an emotional cripple and having an emotional limp.

Those who have symptoms of trauma may have an emotional limp, that is, they may have to deal with the flashbacks, the sensitivity, the emotional numbing, but they have a purpose and a structure to their life. They go forward, and they contain those symptoms. Those who have the wound to meaning cannot handle the symptoms. This implies that for interventions, or actions on behalf of justice, we have to focus on those political and religious transformations that give people meaning.

For the Christian activist, these transformative interventions are always rooted in love. Love is essential for being a church. For me, a good definition of church has little to do with doctrine, but is more related to the quality of relationships which exist among a group of people who have come together for their own betterment and the betterment of the society in which they live, based on their conviction in a God of love. I am a Catholic and I have served my Church as a priest. But even now, we are a church, although we may have different doctrines, because we have come together to celebrate liberty and culture and beauty in open friendship.

The role of the Church in terms of social justice and human rights in the struggle of immigrant communities is perhaps best summed up, for me, in the sixth principle of Catholic social doctrine: rights and responsibilities. Human beings have basic rights and responsibilities according to their human dignity which reflects the fact that they are created in the image of God. Catholic social doctrine puts emphasis on the fact that human beings have a right to life and the basic necessities which allow an adequate human life: food, housing, health care, education, and employment. We are called to respect the rights of others and to work for the common good, the good of each and every member of society, no matter how different he or she is from me.

The 1971 World Synod of Catholic Bishops stated that actions on behalf of social justice are a constitutive dimension of proclaiming the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ. This means that social justice is an absolutely necessary part of preaching and living the Gospel, if I am to call myself a Christian and belong to the Church.

In general, immigrants have at their disposal several cultural strengths to help in the struggle for justice. While I am most familiar with Latino cultures, I believe these truths extend to other immigrant communities as well. The first is family. Because our family values and systems are generally strong, we tend to be accepting of the other. The second, which comes from the at times difficult historical mix of culture and religion, is faith in a God of love. This inclines towards solidarity, perhaps the most wonderful word in the Spanish language solidaridad. When we can see that my destiny is intimately tied to your destiny, we embark on the path of righteousness. I have been privileged to see these traits in action in many, many ways in the ten years I have served in Hispanic communities. As a community, we can indeed celebrate la libertad and protect el futuro for our children.

This work is not easy. Often, we lose heart or we experience a dramatic turn in the road. Believe me, I am speaking from experience here! In closing, I would like to share some advice Thomas Merton, a famous Catholic hermit and spiritual leader, gave to a young activist:

"Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there too a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything."

May the relationships we share as believers in Jesus Christ help us to embrace the diversity of gifts in all God's children, especially those who seek the promise of a new and better life in this blessed land of rights, the United States of America.